The Youth Council – North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust

The Youth Council have been instrumental in the development of the service user participation and co-production across the service as a core principle of service transformation and service development.

Co-Production

From start: No

During process: Yes

In evaluation: No

Evaluation

Peer: Yes

Academic: No

PP Collaborative: Yes

Find out more

Jaymee Smith and Kirsty Booth (experts by experience) - North Staffs Children and Young People's IAPT Youth Council representatives

What We Did

Innovating and generating new ideas to get young people involved and engaged in service improvement and holding managers and clinicians to ensure appropriate service changes are made to benefit them.

• Advocating and influencing role, to identify needs, providing accessible material on YouTube and Facebook to de-stigmatise mental health issues and creating peer to peer positive mental health messages with the Youth Council to reduce stigma.

• Representation, influence and partnership at all levels of recruitment across the CAMHS services.

• Full participation and review of all strategic documents (such as the Trust’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) Transformation Plan) and ensuring changes are made to reflect service user feedback.

• Contribution to staff development days to ensure service user and young people’s influence is paramount and informs staff reflection and professional developments

• Through leadership, the development of 10 positive peer to peer messages and a mental health myth busting presentation for young people’s mental health which has improved health & wellbeing for young people and encouraged young people to engage in the CAMHS service

• Development of the CAMHS pages on the Trust’s website ensuring it is meaningful to young people

• The Team demonstrate excellent Leadership and work hard to reach out and hear as many voices as possible from different areas of the community all working towards the same goal of improving the mental Health of young people and ensuring the young person ‘s voice is represented at all levels of the service .

• Through sharing service user recovery stories, offering hope, control and opportunities to young people experiences serious and enduring mental health difficulties, (recently presented at the Trust’s Recovery Conference)

Wider Support

All CAMHS local agencies and expert support from Changes, a Stoke-on-Trent-based charity supporting people in their mental health recovery.

Co-Production

Jaymee and Kirsty ensure service user voice is at the heart of everything our CAMHs services does.

• Development of the CAMHS pages on the Trust’s website ensuring it is meaningful to young people.

• The team demonstrate excellent leadership and work hard to reach out and hear as many voices as possible from different areas of the community all working towards the same goal of improving the mental Health of young people and ensuring the young person’s voice is represented at all levels of the service.

• Through sharing service user recovery stories, offering hope, control and opportunities to young people experiences serious and enduring mental health difficulties, (recently presented at the Trust’s Recovery Conference).

Looking Back/Challenges Overcome

Promoting full staff engagement took time and there were different levels of engagement from different parts of the service. It also took time to build trust with staff by helping them understand the role of service participation in service development.

The directorate wide approach of promoting the role on email repeatedly, regularly and inclusion in the Clinical Director weekly blog was more helpful at gaining wider staff engagement as oppose to going directly thought the team managers. The support from the CHANGES Manager, Jackie Williamson and the CAMHS Psychology lead was also crucial.

Sustainability

The CAMHS service user council is supported by the Trust service user council ensuring the principles of service user voice being at the heart of all we do is fully embedded in all that we do.

It is policy that service users are on all interview selection of staff and are represented at all directorate meetings.

Evaluation (Peer or Academic)

The service user council has been positively commended by CQC and their impact on service development promoting a collaborative approach and co design to all service developments.

Outcomes

Service user voice at all levels of the service enabling a young person centre service. • A culture of continual learning though use of valuable feedback to improve service.

Sharing

Jaymee Smith and Kirsty Booth regularly share at conferences.

Is there any other information you would like to add?

Initiating service user participation as central to service provision and service development and changing the culture from professional prescribing what need to happen to the development of a more collaboration culture to service provision and service development.

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This site is supported by the Positive Practice in MH Collaborative, Breakthrough MH Ltd, the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health and Otsuka Health Solutions